Chapter Text
By the time Martin joined Mirae Strategy Group, James had already learned how to disappear inside the office.
He knew which elevator arrived emptiest at eight seventeen in the morning, which bathroom on the twelfth floor no one used before lunch, and which seat in the conference room allowed him to avoid appearing in the reflective glass behind Director Choi. He knew how long he could stand beside the printer before someone tried to make small talk, how to eat a triangle of convenience-store kimbap without dropping crumbs onto a spreadsheet, and how to lower his voice until people stopped turning toward him when he spoke.
He had not always been quiet.
That was the strange part.
There had been a time when silence had felt unnatural to him. When he had laughed loudly enough for teachers to poke their heads out of classroom doors. When he had run through winter streets with his scarf trailing loose behind him and someone beside him shouting for him to slow down.
Martin had always been the louder one, though.
Even then.
Especially then.
James remembered Martin at eleven years old, standing on the frozen bank of the narrow stream behind their apartment buildings, both hands buried in the pockets of a red padded jacket. He remembered the steam of Martin’s breath and the snow caught in his hair. He remembered Martin daring him to step onto the ice.
“You’re scared,” Martin had said.
“I’m not scared. I’m smart.”
“That’s what scared people say when they want to sound better than everyone else.”
“You’ll fall through.”
“You’ll save me.”
James had rolled his eyes, but Martin had smiled because he knew James would.
Martin had always known.
It had been easy to be known by him then.
Now, almost fifteen years later, Martin stood at the front of Conference Room B in a dark wool coat, accepting an introduction from Director Choi as if he had never worn a red jacket in his life.
“As you all know, our new senior associate comes to us after three years with Hanul Consulting,” Director Choi said. “He’ll be supporting the Daehan Retail restructuring project and helping with the Seojin account through the end of the quarter.”
Five people sat around the conference table.
Juhoon was to James’s right, turning a pen between his fingers. Seonghyeon sat across from them with the expression of someone who had already begun estimating how much extra work the announcement would create. Keonho, the youngest member of the team, had opened a fresh page in his notebook even though Director Choi had not said anything worth writing down.
And James sat in the chair nearest the window.
The sky over Seoul was the flat, pale gray that arrived every November and stayed until the city forgot what blue looked like. Bare branches scratched against one another above the sidewalk twelve floors below. People hurried between the subway exit and the office buildings with their heads lowered against the wind.
James watched Martin remove his coat.
There were things time should have changed more than it had.
Martin was taller now, his shoulders broader beneath a charcoal suit. His hair was shorter and neatly parted, and there was a faint line between his eyebrows that James did not remember from before. But the small scar beneath Martin’s chin was still there. James knew it had come from falling off a bicycle at thirteen. He knew Martin had cried more from embarrassment than pain. He knew Martin hated having antiseptic sprayed on cuts and loved canned coffee even when it was too sweet.
He knew Martin’s face well enough to recognize the instant Martin saw him.
It lasted less than a second.
Martin’s gaze passed from Seonghyeon to Juhoon and then stopped.
James forgot how to breathe.
No one else could have noticed. Martin did not stumble over his introduction. He did not say James’s name. Nothing in his posture changed. Only his eyes became still, fixed on James with a coldness that felt deliberate from the first moment.
Then Martin looked away.
“I’m grateful for the opportunity,” he said. His voice had deepened since James had last heard it, but not enough to make it unfamiliar. “I hope I can be useful to the team.”
“You’ll be more than useful,” Director Choi assured him. “Hanul doesn’t let go of people like you easily.”
Martin smiled with practiced modesty.
James stared at the legal pad in front of him.
At the top of the page, beneath the date, he had written:
**Daehan Retail — preliminary risk analysis**
Below that, without realizing it, he had drawn a short red line.
He could not remember taking the red pen from Juhoon’s side of the table.
“James.”
Director Choi’s voice made him look up.
“Sorry?”
Director Choi frowned. “I said Martin will need access to the current financial models. Make sure he has the files before noon.”
James’s fingers tightened around the pen.
“Of course.”
Martin looked at him again.
This time there was no mistaking the recognition in his face. There was also no warmth. No surprise. No trace of the boy who used to throw pebbles at James’s bedroom window when he wanted him to come outside.
“James handles most of our data modeling,” Director Choi continued. “He’s quiet, but he knows the numbers better than anyone.”
“That so?” Martin asked.
His tone was mild.
Keonho nodded eagerly. “He’s kind of a genius.”
James wished he had not said it.
Martin’s gaze moved over him, from the collar of his white shirt to the red pen caught between his fingers.
“A genius,” Martin repeated.
James heard it then.
The faint edge beneath the words.
He had not imagined the coldness after all.
Keonho laughed, unaware. “Basically. He finds mistakes before the rest of us even understand what we’re looking at.”
“I’m sure that’s very useful,” Martin said.
He smiled at Keonho when he said it. A nice smile. Easy and bright enough to make Keonho sit straighter in his chair.
When Martin’s eyes returned to James, the smile remained, but something inside it disappeared.
“I look forward to seeing his work.”
James set the red pen down.
For the rest of the meeting, he did not look at Martin again.
---
The team occupied a long row of desks beside the eastern windows. The company called it an open collaboration space. James privately thought of it as a room designed to make privacy look suspicious.
His desk stood at the far end of the row, closest to the emergency stairwell. Juhoon sat beside him. Then Seonghyeon, Keonho, and the desk that had remained empty since Assistant Manager Park transferred to Busan in August.
Martin’s desk.
James understood that before Director Choi led him toward it.
“Convenient,” Martin said as he placed his laptop bag on the chair. “Everyone in one place.”
“Convenient for you,” Seonghyeon said. “You haven’t seen how many messages Director Choi sends when he’s five meters away.”
Director Choi gave him an offended look. “That’s because none of you answer when I speak.”
“You ask questions while we’re wearing headphones.”
“Then stop wearing headphones.”
“That would require listening to Keonho chew.”
“I don’t chew loudly,” Keonho protested.
Martin laughed.
It happened so naturally that James nearly looked up. He caught himself and opened the folder containing Daehan Retail’s quarterly statements instead.
Around him, the others continued talking. Martin asked Seonghyeon about the client. He asked Juhoon which café downstairs made the least terrible coffee. When Keonho apologized for the pile of reference binders encroaching on Martin’s new desk, Martin told him not to worry and helped move them to a cabinet.
He was kind to all of them.
Effortlessly kind.
That hurt more than James wanted it to.
If Martin had become a cruel person, it would have been simpler. James could have looked at him and decided that the boy he remembered no longer existed. Years changed people. He knew that. The Martin from his childhood could have hardened into someone impatient and arrogant. It would have been painful, but at least it would have made sense.
Instead, Martin crouched beside Keonho’s chair to pick up a pen Keonho had dropped.
“Here.”
“Thanks, hyung.”
“You’re going to ruin your back sitting like that.”
“That’s what Seonghyeon-hyung says.”
“It’s because your spine currently resembles a question mark,” Seonghyeon said.
Martin smiled. “He’s right.”
James looked at the numbers on his monitor until they blurred.
His phone vibrated beside his keyboard.
**JUHOON:** You okay?
James glanced sideways. Juhoon was looking at his own screen.
**JAMES:** Fine.
Three dots appeared almost immediately.
**JUHOON:** You look like someone just announced mandatory weekend work.
**JAMES:** That’s my normal face.
**JUHOON:** Your normal face is slightly less haunted.
James closed the message without answering.
He had never told Juhoon about Martin. He had never told anyone at work. There had been no reason to. Martin belonged to a part of his life James rarely discussed, even with people who knew him well.
They had grown up in the same apartment complex in Daejeon. Their mothers had met at a residents’ meeting and decided their sons should walk to school together. For nearly ten years, Martin had been so firmly built into James’s life that separating one memory from the other had become impossible.
Martin in the back row of James’s middle school classroom, kicking the leg of his chair when he got bored.
Martin asleep on the floor of James’s bedroom with an unfinished bowl of ramyeon beside him.
Martin pressing his cold hands against the back of James’s neck in winter.
Martin stealing the fish cake from James’s tteokbokki and then buying him an entire second serving because James had stopped speaking to him.
Martin on the roof of their high school, sitting with one knee drawn to his chest while the sun went down beyond the apartment buildings.
Martin saying, “Promise you won’t become one of those people who forgets everyone after university.”
James saying, “You’re the one who forgets things.”
“Not you.”
It had been a careless promise.
Most promises made at eighteen were.
After graduation, Martin’s family moved to Seoul. James went to university in Daejeon. At first they messaged every day. Then every few days. Then only when something reminded one of them of the other.
Eventually, James noticed that he had sent the last four messages.
He stopped sending a fifth.
Martin did not ask why.
Four years had passed after that. Four years without a birthday message, a late-night phone call, or even the empty courtesy of liking one another’s photographs online. James had taught himself to think of Martin as someone he had once known.
He had never managed to teach himself how to stop loving him.
That was his own humiliation, and he carried it quietly.
At eleven thirty, James finished compiling the files Director Choi had requested. He checked the formulas twice, removed two older drafts, and attached the supporting notes. Then he opened a new email.
**To: Martin Lee**
**Subject: Daehan Retail — current models and supporting files**
He hesitated over the first line.
*Hi, Martin.*
Too familiar.
*Mr. Lee.*
Ridiculous. They were on the same team.
He deleted both and wrote:
*Attached are the current Daehan Retail models, including the revised debt assumptions and the scenario analysis requested last Friday. The input cells are marked in blue. I’ve included a short methodology note in the final folder.*
*Please tell me if you have any questions.*
He stared at the last sentence. Deleted *please*. Put it back. Deleted it again.
In the end, he sent the email without a greeting and without his name. His automatic signature would do what politeness required.
Martin answered three minutes later.
**Come to Meeting Room 4.**
No greeting.
No name.
James read the message twice.
Meeting Room 4 stood empty at the opposite end of the office, beyond the reception desk and the executive suites. People used it when the other rooms were occupied or when they wanted to have a conversation no one else could hear.
James turned in his chair.
Martin’s desk was empty.
His coat still hung from the back of it.
“Where are you going?” Juhoon asked.
“Martin has questions about the model.”
“Already?”
James locked his computer. “Apparently.”
Juhoon glanced toward the empty desk, then back at James. “Want me to come?”
The offer was casual, but James heard the concern beneath it. Juhoon had a way of noticing the smallest changes in a room and pretending he had not.
“It’s fine,” James said.
He stood before Juhoon could ask again.
Meeting Room 4 had frosted glass walls and space for six people, though James had never seen more than three inside it. Martin stood near the window with one hand in his pocket. James could see the edge of his phone in the other.
For one stupid moment, the sight felt painfully familiar.
Martin used to stand like that while waiting outside James’s after-school academy. One hand hidden in his jacket, the other holding a phone he claimed he had not been checking every thirty seconds. Sometimes he brought hotteok wrapped in paper. He always pretended he had bought too much by accident.
James pushed open the door.
“You wanted to see me?”
Martin did not answer immediately.
The door swung shut behind James with a soft click.
Neither of them moved.
Up close, the years between them seemed both vast and insufficient. James could see the small mole near Martin’s left eyebrow. He could see that Martin still pressed his tongue against the inside of his cheek when irritated.
Martin looked at him as if he were searching for evidence of something.
“You really work here,” he said at last.
James had prepared himself for questions about the files. He had not prepared for that.
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Two years.”
“And you didn’t know I was joining?”
“No.”
“Interesting.”
There was nothing interesting about it, but Martin said the word like an accusation.
James forced himself to meet his eyes. “Was there a problem with the model?”
Martin looked down at his phone. “You sent me seven folders.”
“Five folders and two reference files.”
“Is that supposed to be better?”
“They cover different portions of the analysis.”
“I can read the file names, James.”
The way Martin said his name caused something old and defenseless to lift its head inside him.
James pushed it down.
“You asked for the current models.”
“I asked for the models. I didn’t ask you to bury them under every document the company has produced since incorporation.”
“There’s an index in the main folder.”
“I saw the index.”
“Then I’m not sure what you need me to explain.”
Martin looked up slowly.
James immediately wished he had phrased it differently.
Not because it was rude. It was not. But Martin’s expression changed, and James recognized the warning in it. Martin had worn the same look as a teenager whenever someone challenged him in front of others.
They were alone now.
That should have made a difference.
It did not.
“Still like that, then,” Martin said.
James’s mouth went dry. “Like what?”
“Always convinced you’re the smartest person in the room.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You never had to.”
Martin placed his phone on the table. He walked toward James, stopping on the other side of a chair. The distance between them was not small enough to be threatening. Still, James felt cornered.
“You have a way of making people feel stupid,” Martin continued. “You sit there with that expression and wait for everyone else to catch up.”
“I don’t.”
“You did it in the meeting.”
“I barely spoke in the meeting.”
“Exactly.”
James stared at him.
He had expected awkwardness. Perhaps Martin would behave as if they were strangers. Perhaps he would greet James warmly and force them both to pretend their silence over the past four years had not happened.
He had not expected this.
“Why did you call me here?” James asked.
“I told you. The files.”
“No. Why did you really call me here?”
Martin’s eyes narrowed.
James could hear the air-conditioning unit humming above them. Somewhere in the corridor, a cart rolled across the tile, followed by the faint clatter of cups.
The office continued around them, ordinary and unaware.
“You’ve been here one morning,” James said. He kept his voice low. “You see me for the first time in four years, and this is how you speak to me?”
“What did you expect?”
The question struck harder than it should have.
James looked away. He did not want Martin to see the answer on his face.
“I didn’t expect anything.”
Martin gave a short, humorless laugh. “There it is.”
“What?”
“That thing you do.”
James’s patience frayed. “You keep saying that as if it means something.”
“You know exactly what it means.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Of course you don’t.”
“Then explain it.”
Martin’s expression hardened.
For several seconds, he said nothing. James waited. Some part of him still believed there had to be a reason, that Martin would say one clear sentence and the hostility would arrange itself into something understandable.
Martin picked up his phone instead.
“Send me a clean version of the main model.”
“It is clean.”
“Remove the notes.”
“The notes explain the assumptions.”
“I didn’t ask what they explain.”
“Director Choi requires documentation for every modified assumption.”
“And I’m telling you I don’t want your commentary all over the file.”
“It isn’t commentary.”
Martin stepped closer.
“Do you always argue this much when someone gives you a simple instruction?”
James felt heat rise into his face. “Do you always call people into meeting rooms to insult them?”
“Only when they make basic tasks unnecessarily difficult.”
The answer was immediate.
Careless.
Cruel enough that James could not hide the effect of it.
Martin saw.
James knew he saw because his gaze flickered across James’s face. For the smallest moment, something uncertain appeared there.
Then Martin looked bored.
“Send it before lunch,” he said.
James swallowed. “Fine.”
“And James?”
His hand was already on the door.
He stopped.
Martin leaned against the edge of the table. “At work, we don’t know each other.”
There it was.
The thing James had feared most, spoken plainly.
He turned back. “You’re the one who brought up the past.”
“I’m making sure there’s no misunderstanding.”
“What misunderstanding could there be?”
“That you can use whatever happened years ago to make things familiar between us.”
James could not speak.
He thought of the unopened messages on his old phone. The last one he had sent Martin after university graduation. A photograph of two canned coffees sitting on a convenience-store table, with the message:
*This place still sells the disgusting one you like.*
Martin had read it.
He had never answered.
“I wasn’t planning to,” James said.
“Good.”
Martin’s voice remained flat.
James opened the door.
“Send the file,” Martin added behind him.
James walked back to his desk without looking at anyone.
---
At twelve ten, the five of them went downstairs for lunch.
The wind had strengthened, slipping between the buildings and pushing dead leaves across the pavement in frantic circles. Keonho had forgotten his gloves. Martin gave him a pair from the pocket of his coat.
“You won’t need them?” Keonho asked.
“I have another pair in my bag.”
“You carry spare gloves?”
“My mother sends me weather warnings every morning. If I get sick, she’ll somehow know I ignored her.”
Keonho laughed and put them on.
James walked several steps behind them with Juhoon.
He remembered Martin’s mother too. She used to cut pears into thin slices and bring them to James when he studied at their apartment. During winter, she packed extra heat patches into Martin’s schoolbag because she knew he would give half of them away.
Martin once slipped one into James’s coat without mentioning it.
James had found it hours later, still warm against the lining.
“You’re doing it again,” Juhoon said.
James blinked. “Doing what?”
“Looking haunted.”
“I’m cold.”
“You’re wearing the thickest coat here.”
James shoved his hands deeper into his pockets.
They entered a small seolleongtang restaurant behind the office. The windows had fogged from the heat inside, and every table was crowded with metal bowls, dishes of kimchi, and abandoned winter coats.
Martin held the door open for Seonghyeon.
Then Keonho.
Then Juhoon.
James came last.
Martin let go.
The door swung back quickly enough to strike James’s shoulder.
Pain flashed down his arm.
“Oh,” Martin said.
He did not sound sorry.
Juhoon caught the door before it hit James again. “You okay?”
“Yes.”
Martin looked at James over Juhoon’s shoulder. “You should pay attention.”
James said nothing.
They crowded around a table near the kitchen. James took the only remaining seat, directly across from Martin.
For half an hour, Martin charmed everyone.
He listened when Seonghyeon complained about the Daehan executives. He remembered the name of Keonho’s university after hearing it once. He offered Juhoon the last piece of kkakdugi and waved the restaurant owner over when Director Choi’s water glass was empty.
When the bowls arrived, steam rose between Martin and James.
James kept his eyes lowered.
“You said you worked on the Seojin account too?” Seonghyeon asked Martin.
“Briefly. I reviewed their expansion forecast last year.”
James glanced up despite himself.
Martin noticed.
“What?” he asked.
The table quieted.
James should have looked away. Instead, he said, “Their expansion forecast was revised in March. The original model overestimated store revenue by almost eleven percent.”
“I’m aware.”
“You reviewed the original?”
Martin set down his spoon.
“Yes.”
James heard too late how the question could sound.
“I only meant—”
“I know what you meant.”
Seonghyeon looked between them. “There were a lot of teams on that engagement.”
“There were,” Martin said. “And since James is apparently familiar with it, I’m sure he knows that external forecasting depends on the information a client provides.”
James’s stomach tightened.
“I wasn’t criticizing your work.”
“Weren’t you?”
“No.”
Martin leaned back in his chair. “Then why bring it up?”
“I thought it was relevant.”
“To lunch?”
Keonho gave a nervous laugh.
James looked down at his soup. He had barely touched it. The broth’s surface trembled faintly around his spoon.
“I was making conversation,” he said.
Martin laughed.
This time there was real amusement in it.
“That was conversation?”
Heat spread across James’s face.
Seonghyeon interrupted before the silence became worse. “James’s version of conversation is correcting spreadsheets verbally.”
“I don’t do that,” James muttered.
“You corrected the restaurant bill last week.”
“They charged us for six drinks.”
“There were five of us,” Keonho said.
“That’s exactly why I corrected it.”
The others laughed. Even Juhoon smiled, though he kept watching James.
Martin’s gaze did not soften.
“You must be popular here,” he said.
The words sounded harmless. The tone was not.
James forced himself to lift another spoonful of soup.
“I manage.”
“I’m sure you do.”
The conversation moved on.
James did not speak again.
---
The afternoon passed slowly.
At one thirty, Martin returned the file James had revised with seventeen comments. Six asked questions already answered in the methodology notes Martin had ordered him to remove. Four requested changes that contradicted one another. One consisted only of the words:
**This makes no sense.**
James opened the referenced cell.
The formula was correct.
He checked it by hand anyway.
Then again on his calculator.
When he approached Martin’s desk, Martin was explaining an internal system to Keonho. His voice was patient, his instructions clear.
James waited until he finished.
“What?” Martin asked without looking at him.
“Your comment on the working-capital adjustment.”
Martin clicked through his email. “What about it?”
“You said it doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t.”
“The formula uses the thirty-day average from the revised revenue schedule.”
“I can see what it uses.”
“Then what doesn’t make sense?”
Martin looked up.
James stood beside his desk holding a printed copy of the model. He hated that his hands had begun to feel unsteady. He pressed the pages against his side to hide it.
“I shouldn’t have to teach you how to explain your own work,” Martin said.
Keonho stopped typing.
James became aware of the other desks around them. Juhoon’s keyboard went quiet.
“I’m asking which portion you want clarified,” James said.
“The entire calculation.”
“The calculation is standard.”
“So you don’t know how to explain it.”
“I do know.”
“Then why are you standing there arguing with me?”
James’s grip tightened on the papers.
“I’m not arguing.”
“You’ve been defensive all day.”
“I’m trying to understand what you want.”
Martin leaned back and looked past James toward the others.
“Does he always need this much supervision?”
No one answered.
Keonho stared at his monitor.
Seonghyeon cleared his throat. “James usually works independently.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
James felt something inside him go still.
It was not calmness. Calmness was soft and measured. This was what happened when anger grew too large to move.
He looked at Martin.
Martin met his eyes without flinching.
“You know the calculation is correct,” James said quietly.
“I know it isn’t clear.”
“It was clear with the notes attached.”
“Then maybe you should learn to build a model that doesn’t require an essay to make it usable.”
“You told me to remove the notes.”
“And now you’re blaming me?”
“No. I’m saying—”
“I heard what you said.”
Martin’s voice cut across his.
The office seemed unbearably quiet. James could hear someone laughing near the reception desk, far enough away to belong to another world.
“You made the file,” Martin continued. “If it isn’t usable, that’s your responsibility. Fix it instead of making excuses.”
James looked down at the printed pages.
A red comment bubble sat beside cell G47.
**This makes no sense.**
He had worked on that model until nearly midnight the previous Thursday. Director Choi had praised it on Friday morning. The client had used its projections in a meeting with their lenders.
Martin knew enough to understand it.
That was what made the humiliation unbearable. This was not a disagreement about the work. Martin had searched for a place to press, found one, and kept his finger there.
“I’ll fix it,” James said.
“Good.”
Martin turned back to his monitor.
James remained beside the desk for another second.
He wanted to say something. He wanted to ask what had happened during the four years they had not spoken. He wanted to demand an explanation for Meeting Room 4, for lunch, for the door against his shoulder, and for the contempt Martin had carried into the office as if he had been saving it.
Mostly, he wanted to ask how Martin could look at him and feel nothing but disgust when James looked back and still saw every winter they had survived together.
But Keonho was listening.
So were Juhoon and Seonghyeon.
At work, we don’t know each other.
James returned to his desk.
He fixed the calculation by leaving it exactly as it was and adding a text box that explained the same formula in simpler words.
Martin accepted the revision without comment.
---
At six thirty, snow began to fall.
It was too early in the season for it to settle. The flakes melted as soon as they touched the pavement, leaving the streets black and shining beneath the traffic lights.
Most of the office emptied by seven. Director Choi left first, followed by Keonho, who returned Martin’s gloves neatly folded.
“Thank you,” Keonho said. “I would’ve frozen.”
“You would’ve survived the walk to the subway.”
“Barely.”
“Bring your own tomorrow.”
“I will.”
Martin smiled. “Get home safely.”
Keonho bowed to the remaining team and hurried toward the elevator.
Seonghyeon left ten minutes later. Juhoon stayed until seven forty, pretending to reorganize a report while James worked through Martin’s final comments.
“You don’t have to wait,” James said.
“I’m not waiting.”
“You’ve moved the same paragraph three times.”
“It’s an important paragraph.”
“You called it unnecessary this morning.”
“Maybe I’ve grown.”
James looked at him.
Juhoon sighed and closed the document. “Fine. I’m waiting.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ve been strange all day.”
“I’m always strange.”
“Not like this.”
James returned his attention to the spreadsheet.
At the other end of the row, Martin was speaking quietly on the phone. He sounded warm. Almost affectionate.
“Yes, I ate,” he said. “No, not convenience-store food. I went with the team.”
A pause.
“I have gloves.”
James stared at cell G47.
Martin’s mother.
It had to be.
James wondered if she knew they worked together now. He wondered whether she remembered him. Once, she had called James her second son because he spent more evenings at their table than at his own.
The memory opened somewhere tender.
He shut the spreadsheet.
“Go home,” he told Juhoon.
Juhoon studied his face. “Come with me.”
“I have another hour.”
“It’s your first day on this project.”
“Exactly.”
“And Martin’s first day in the company.”
James looked at him sharply.
Juhoon’s expression changed.
“You two know each other,” he said.
It was not a question.
Across the room, Martin ended his call.
James lowered his voice. “No.”
“That was a terrible lie.”
“We don’t.”
Juhoon followed James’s gaze. Martin had begun packing his laptop.
“He’s been targeting you since the meeting,” Juhoon said. “He’s nice to everyone else. He barely knows us, and somehow he already acts like you’ve personally offended him.”
“Keep your voice down.”
“So I’m right.”
James rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses. His head had ached since lunch.
“You’re not right.”
“Then tell me what’s happening.”
“I can’t.”
The honesty slipped out before James could stop it.
Juhoon became very still.
James looked toward Martin. He was putting on his coat, his back turned to them.
“I can’t,” James repeated more quietly. “Please leave it alone.”
Juhoon did not look satisfied. He also did not push.
“Come downstairs with me,” he said. “Get some air. Buy coffee. Anything.”
“I need to finish.”
“James.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve said that seven times today.”
“Then you should believe me by now.”
Juhoon watched him for a long moment.
Finally, he put on his coat.
“If he gives you more work tonight, send it to me.”
“I won’t.”
“That wasn’t a request.”
Despite everything, the corner of James’s mouth moved.
Juhoon noticed. “There. Less haunted.”
“Go home.”
“Message me when you leave.”
Juhoon waited until James nodded. Then he walked toward the elevators.
Martin passed him near the reception desk.
They exchanged a few words James could not hear. Juhoon glanced back once before the elevator doors closed.
Then only James and Martin remained in their section of the office.
James opened the spreadsheet again.
A minute later, Martin stopped beside his desk.
“You tell him?”
James kept his eyes on the monitor. “Tell him what?”
“About us.”
The words hurt in a different way than they should have.
There had never been an *us*. Not in the way James had wanted. There had only been years of friendship, one-sided longing, and the quiet end of both.
“No.”
“Didn’t look that way.”
“He noticed you were treating me differently.”
Martin gave a soft scoff. “So you complained.”
“I didn’t have to. You did it in front of everyone.”
“Careful.”
James looked up.
Martin stood over him with his coat buttoned, one hand resting on the divider between their desks.
“With what?” James asked.
“That tone.”
Something in James finally snapped.
It did not make him brave. He was too tired for bravery. It only made silence impossible.
“You ignored me for four years,” he said. “You appear at my office without warning. You tell me we’re strangers, and then you spend the entire day trying to humiliate me. Now you’re warning me about my tone?”
Martin’s jaw tightened.
James’s heart beat painfully hard, but he continued.
“I don’t know what you think I did. I don’t know why you hate me. But I didn’t bring our past into this office. You did.”
“Keep your voice down.”
“There’s no one here.”
“That doesn’t mean you get to speak to me however you want.”
James almost laughed.
The unfairness was so complete that it felt unreal.
“How should I speak to you?”
“Professionally would be a start.”
“You called my work unusable in front of the team.”
“Because it was.”
“You know it wasn’t.”
“You always did have trouble accepting criticism.”
“And you always changed the subject when you knew you were wrong.”
The sentence escaped before James could take it back.
Martin’s expression went blank.
James remembered that blankness. It had appeared only a few times when they were younger, usually before Martin said something he could not undo.
Martin bent down slightly, bringing his face closer to James’s.
“You think knowing me when we were children gives you some special understanding of me?”
“No.”
“You think because you remember a few stupid things, you can sit there and decide what I think?”
“I said no.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
The words landed cleanly.
James removed his glasses. He folded them and placed them beside his keyboard because Martin’s face had become too sharp through the lenses.
“Then stop punishing me for knowing you,” he said.
For an instant, Martin said nothing.
Outside, snow drifted past the dark windows. Reflected in the glass, they looked like two strangers trapped in the same frame.
Martin straightened.
“I’m not punishing you.”
“What would you call it?”
“Managing someone who isn’t as capable as everyone seems to think.”
James’s throat tightened.
Martin knew exactly what to attack.
When they were children, James had told him everything: how terrified he was of disappointing his parents, how hard he worked to make intelligence look effortless, how praise made him anxious because it meant everyone expected him to be brilliant again the next day.
Martin knew that being called incompetent would hurt more than being called annoying or cold.
He knew, and he had chosen it.
James put his glasses back on.
“Is there anything else?” he asked.
Martin studied him.
Perhaps he wanted another reaction. James refused to give him one.
“Yes,” Martin said. “The Seojin historical data needs to be reconciled before tomorrow’s meeting.”
“That isn’t my assignment.”
“It is now.”
“Director Choi told me to finish the Daehan sensitivity analysis.”
“You can do both.”
“By tomorrow?”
“You’re a genius, remember?”
The word came out coated in mockery.
James stared at his screen.
It was nearly eight.
The Seojin reconciliation would take at least four hours. Possibly five if the archived data had not been cleaned.
“I have plans tonight,” he lied.
Martin glanced at James’s empty desk calendar.
“Cancel them.”
“You can’t reassign my work without asking Director Choi.”
“I’m senior on the project.”
“Not on Seojin.”
“You want me to call him?”
James knew what would happen if Martin did. Director Choi would approve it. He liked employees who stayed late without complaint. James’s annual review was six weeks away, and promotions would be decided soon after. A complaint about a new senior associate, especially one with Martin’s reputation, would make James look difficult.
Martin knew that too.
He had learned the office in less than a day, or perhaps cruelty simply made people observant.
“No,” James said.
“No, what?”
“No, you don’t need to call him.”
“Then you’ll finish it?”
James looked toward the windows.
Snow melted against the glass before it could cling.
“Yes.”
“Send it to me by eight tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll send it when it’s complete.”
“Eight, James.”
Martin picked up his laptop bag.
He had nearly reached the aisle when James spoke again.
“Did you know?”
Martin stopped.
“That I worked here,” James said. “Before you accepted the job. Did you know?”
Martin’s back remained turned.
James waited.
He hated the small hope that survived inside him. Hated that some part of him wanted Martin to say yes, because at least then Martin’s arrival would be connected to him. Even hatred would mean James had not been forgotten as completely as he had believed.
Martin looked over his shoulder.
“If I had known,” he said, “I would’ve reconsidered.”
The hope died so quickly it left James breathless.
Martin walked away.
The elevator opened with a soft chime. The doors closed behind him.
James remained at his desk.
For several minutes, he did nothing. The office lights dimmed automatically around him, leaving only the lamp above his workstation and the blue-white glow of his monitor.
He thought of Martin at eleven, stepping onto the frozen stream.
He thought of the ice cracking beneath Martin’s shoes. The sudden terror on his face. James dropping to his knees on the bank and reaching for him, screaming until his throat hurt.
The ice had held.
Martin had crawled back, shaking so hard he could barely stand. Then he had grabbed James by the sleeve and pulled him into a clumsy, breathless embrace.
“You would’ve saved me,” Martin had whispered.
James had been furious.
He had also held on.
At twenty-seven, sitting alone beneath fluorescent lights, James pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes until color burst in the darkness.
He was tired. He was angry. He was more hurt than he had any right to be after four years of silence.
Worst of all, he still loved Martin.
Not the man who had spent the day humiliating him. James could tell himself that much. He loved a boy who no longer existed, a boy in a red padded jacket who had trusted James with every frightened part of himself.
But they had the same face.
They had the same scar beneath their chin, the same voice, the same habit of pressing a tongue against the inside of one cheek when angry. The past lived inside Martin’s smallest movements, even when everything else about him had become cruel.
James lowered his hands.
The Seojin folder waited unopened on his screen.
He clicked it.
There were thirty-two spreadsheets.
At eight sixteen, Juhoon messaged him.
**JUHOON:** Home?
James looked at Martin’s empty desk.
His spare pair of gloves sat near the monitor, forgotten beside a new employee handbook.
James remembered warm fabric hidden inside the lining of his coat. He remembered canned coffee. Pear slices. A rooftop at sunset. A promise neither of them had kept.
He typed:
**JAMES:** Almost.
Then he opened the first spreadsheet and began working.
Outside, the season’s first snow fell over Seoul without settling anywhere.